RECAP: Winning the Battle, Losing the War
Despite BYU's struggles against Kansas and Arizona State, there was little doubt that the blue Cougars were going to beat the red Cougars of Houston. Houston is awful this year, with a decent defense hindered by one of college football's most unwatchable offenses. Both sides of that equation lived up to the billing in this game—Houston's defense gave the BYU offense some trouble (not that it's been hard to do that over the last month), but the red Cougars' offense barely bothered to get off the bus. BYU pretty much sleepwalked to a win despite not playing especially well.
In fact, to be honest, nothing really surprising happened in this game. The trends we've seen since halftime of the UCF game (which seems, for whatever reason, to have been a strangely definitive inflection point for this BYU team) largely continued—the offense underwhelmed but scored enough not to lose, the defense largely played well and generated plenty of chaos, and special teams gave us yet another electrifying highlight.
But ultimately, none of it mattered, at least as far as the postseason goes. While a win over either Kansas or Arizona State would have guaranteed BYU a place in the conference title game, that didn't happen. Instead, the Cougars left themselves at the mercy of the Big 12's convoluted tiebreaker system, and when Colorado, Arizona State, and Iowa State all won their games this week, they sealed BYU's fate. Despite an impressive 10-2 record, the Cougars will not play for a conference title and are out of the running for the College Football Playoff. It hurts that the Cougars were so close to putting together an all-time great season, but they're still on pace for eleven wins. Against the second true P4 schedule in program history, that's a pretty amazing achievement, even if better things were painfully within reach. Here are some thoughts on BYU's 30-18 Senior Day win over Houston:
The Good:
Houston's offense actually didn't look terrible in the early going, with the red Cougars taking leads of 7-0 and 10-7 on a couple of impressive sustained drives. Then, they really didn't do much else the rest of the game. After they took that 10-7 lead, Houston's remaining meaningful possessions ended as follows: punt, punt, interception, punt, punt, garbage time TD, fumble, fumble. In a wild, freezing cold, turnover-filled game, BYU came out on top in the turnover margin 4-3 thanks to a swarming, disruptive defensive attack that dominated the line of scrimmage and crashed into the backfield over and over. With the exception of a miserable first half against Arizona State, Jay Hill's defense has been playing some of its best football since halftime of the UCF game, with an increasingly wide array of unexpected young talent stepping up to contribute. Tanner Wall, who I seem to be mentioning a lot recently, had an outstanding game with 13 total tackles—for context, the great Kai Nacua's career high was 14. Wall, in case you forgot, is a redshirt sophomore—assuming we don't lose him to the portal, which would be devastating, I expect him to be a force to be reckoned with over the next couple of seasons. Miles Hall—who has only appeared in four games as a true freshman this season and so will be eligible to treat it as a redshirt year—had another nice game against Houston, recording a TFL and putting in some solid rotational minutes. But for the defense, this game was really and truly all about the stars. Jack Kelly was a monster, showing exactly why everyone was so high on him in the offseason and stuffing the stat sheet with an interception, a forced fumble, a sack, and 2.5 TFLs. Tyler Batty saved perhaps his best game as a Cougar for Senior Day, racking up an interception, nine total tackles (with 2.5 TFLs), and a pair of QB hurries as he made his presence felt all over the field. Blake Mangelson and John Nelson each celebrated their Senior Day by participating in pivotal fumbles. This defense is going to lose a lot of talent to graduation and the portal, and Coach Hill will have his work cut out for him replacing so much production.
The BYU offense struggled in this game, as it so often has in the latter half of this season, but there were bright spots. Chase Roberts and Keelan Marion were the stars of the show in the passing game, and Marion and Parker Kingston also picked up some solid yardage on fly sweeps. LJ Martin rushed for 96 yards but only averaged 4 yards per carry; more effective running the ball was Jake Retzlaff himself, who finished with 62 yards and 2 touchdowns on 6.3 yards per carry. Notably, BYU's offensive line was solid and dependable despite missing multiple starters, including first- and second-string right tackles Austin Leausa and Isaiah Jatta and starting center Connor Pay. Bruce Mitchell, who has been relatively quiet over the last few games, stepped back in against Houston and looked really good. With Pay's eligibility exhausted, Mitchell (just a redshirt sophomore) looks like a strong candidate to be BYU's starting center over the next two seasons.
It wouldn't be a BYU win in 2024 without a crazy special teams play, and against Houston, the blue Cougars added yet another kickoff return to their season highlight reel: Talan Alfrey had the ball fortuitously bounce straight at him on a Houston onside kick attempt, and he took it the other way untouched for what was just about BYU's easiest touchdown of the season. Will Ferrin made his only field goal attempt and stayed perfect on PATs for the season, adding three more to his tally. He is now 21/24 kicking field goals and a flawless 38/38 on extra points. He's put together one of the best kicking seasons in BYU football history—highlighted, of course, by his ice cold game-winner against Utah—and has made himself a bit of a Provo celebrity in the process. And best of all, he still has one more year left in a BYU uniform! Kalani Sitake and his staff have scored some serious talents in the transfer portal over the last few years, but Ferrin has rather unexpectedly proven to be one of the most important.
The Bad:
The BYU offense is in a serious rut right now, and things didn't look much better against Houston than they have in the past few games. The formula for success for BYU has been relatively simple in the back half of the season—the offense flows well at tempo and tends to stagnate at a slower pace. Unfortunately, Aaron Roderick continues to choose the latter option, and as a result, the offense only rarely does anything noteworthy. The blue Cougars only managed to score 23 points on offense against Houston—actually one of their better totals since the UCF game, but still a far cry from what they were managing earlier in the season. Jake Retzlaff and LJ Martin each lost fumbles in this game (as did Parker Kingston on a punt return), though notably, Retzlaff wasn't intercepted for the first time since the Utah game. I'm willing to attribute part of the BYU offense's struggles (the fumbles, for example) to the bitterly cold conditions of the game, and with the defense forcing four turnovers of its own, the blue Cougars' mistakes didn't put them in serious jeopardy. But BYU's final scoring output once again underwhelmed—in a season where the Cougars' inability to pass the so-called "eye test" has often been lampooned by talking heads, ARod's offense has ultimately justified those criticisms to some extent. While this offense is not as bad, on paper, as some of the pundits seem to believe, you're going to have a hard time convincing anyone it could keep up with the kind of teams that will be in the College Football Playoff.
*Sigh* Thirteen points. This BYU team scored thirteen points against Kansas. It's still a little unfathomable two weeks later, to be honest. In hindsight, it should have been incredibly simple for the Cougars to clinch a berth in the Big 12 championship game in their second P4 season. It would have been incredible, but it was not to be.
Still, there's plenty to celebrate from this season. The 2024 BYU football team was better than anyone's wildest preseason expectations, winning ten games—several of them against legitimately impressive opponents. What the Cougars did this year was flat-out astonishing. If they manage to win their bowl game, they will finish with eleven wins for just the 13th time in program history, and the second under Kalani Sitake. Speaking of Coach Sitake, despite either the offense or the defense (or both) underperforming fairly dramatically in all but one of the last five seasons (2020), BYU has won ten games three times in that stretch. That's a run of success that stands up to Bronco Mendenhall's best years in the late 2000's—in fact, it's fair to argue that this season's 10-win slate, coming against only the second P4 schedule BYU has ever faced, might be in contention for the most impressive record ever achieved by a BYU football team. Whether or not the Cougars ultimately reach the 11-win mark in their bowl game, the question now is simple: what will they do for an encore?
Well, we have to start with the assumption that BYU's coaching staff will stay at least mostly intact. That's not guaranteed—rumors have been swirling for weeks that Utah State's administration (what's left of it, anyway) might try to dangle a gigantic payday in front of Jay Hill in an effort to stabilize their scandal-ridden program. Coach Hill leaving would be a major blow to this team, both on the field and in recruiting. But so long as the Aggies' efforts to pry him away are unsuccessful, this team should take a step forward in the coming offseason just by virtue of having another year in the Big 12 under its belt—and a successful one at that—which will add some cachet to the staff's recruiting efforts.
The two areas of greatest concern for Jay Hill will be the defensive line, which loses all five of its top rotational players to graduation, and the cornerbacks room, which loses starters Jakob Robinson and Marque Collins as well as a key backup in Mory Bamba. On offense, the line will lose regulars Caleb Etienne, Brayden Keim, and Connor Pay; the wide receivers room loses its two brightest stars in Chase Roberts and Darius Lassiter; and the Cougars' top two tight ends, Keanu Hill and Mata'ava Ta'ase, are also both graduating, as is running back Hinckley Ropati. That is a ton of talent to replace. In total, I count 17 major contributors that BYU is losing to graduation. How the Cougars perform next year will largely depend on two things: how well the team's younger talents step up to replace their graduating teammates, and what success the BYU coaching staff has in the transfer portal this offseason.
I have heard a touch of doom and gloom from the BYU fanbase over the past few weeks—the idea that the best is behind us and we won't get a better shot than this in the Big 12. I suppose there's an element of battered fan syndrome creeping in there. I personally think that this BYU team may just be getting started. Certainly, the trajectory of Jay Hill's defense has been nothing short of remarkable, and Aaron Roderick's offense is still loaded with talent—the only question will be whether he can adapt his scheme to best take advantage of it. Quoting Frank Sinatra, it's just possible that "The best is yet to come!"